I have recently setup Royal Render with Arnold. We are running Arnold 2.10 and XSI 2011 sp1 adv, Royal Render v6.01.69.

Our work machines are windows machines and we have a linux renderfarm. So far the scenes get sent to the render farm correctly, and the work groups attach correctly. I have setup the linked address's.

Everything on that front is working, and test renders with scenes and shaders are working. I then submitted a model with a texture, and the textures get the softimage system path automatically added to the front of every texture file (External Files), and then cause the render to crash as the texture files cant be found.

Any one had a similar problem or think they could point me in the correct location. I think somewhere there must be some code that auto adds the system path to the front of the external file name, but cant figure out where it might be.

This is what the path looks like on the windows machine:
WARNING : 3033 - Unable to resolve path: \\karoo\stickman\rnd\Texturing\user\snail_texturing\MatLib\final\snail_tongue_spec_1001.tif

on the Linux machine it looks like this:
ERROR : [arnold] 00:00:00 244mb [texturesys] Could not open file: /karoo/stickman/scenes/scn_000/shots/scn_000_000/previz/simon_anderson/karoo/stickman/rnd/Texturing/user/snail_texturing/MatLib/final/snail_body_col_1001.tif: Cannot open

The XSI project is in this location:
/karoo/stickman/scenes/scn_000/shots/scn_000_000/previz/simon_anderson/

As you can see it merges the xsi project path onto the front of the path, due to the path being in windows mode, instead of converting the windows path into linux

we have scntoc files enabled, and I read through some previous posts where you mentioned that you need them, as it gets the textures from the scntoc file.

We have previously been rendering all our jobs with local scene copy off as our scene files get quite large, but I have tested, with it enabled and the same error still exists.

What information does it get from the scntoc file with regards to the textures? as maybe I can double check the scenetoc is being written out correctly, as currently there is no image texture paths in the scentoc.

Everything was previous working with royal. We added a new project which had a new folder paths, and I have updated the linktabs and now seem to be having this problem, I wonder if I added the wrong information in one of the .sh files, but have double checked them all and they all look correct.

>with local scene copy off as our scene files get quite large
Isn't that a reason to turn it on?
Of course in case your local HDD has at least 10GB of space left.
But usually the larger the files, the more speed improvement you get with that feature.

>What information does it get from the scntoc file with regards to the textures?
The full path.

Without local scene copy RR does not convert any path in the .scntoc file.
(Just to be sure, you do not have some [scene]_lx files beside the scene file that you submitted? RR 7.0 only)

>I have updated the linktabs
Ah, you are using linktab files. Not the RR .scntoc conversion.

>but I have tested, with it enabled and the same error still exists.
Then please check the local scene cache /usr/local/RR_localdata/scenes/....
Are the texture paths in the scntoc converted?_________________Holger SchÃ¶nberger
Binary Alchemy - digital materialization

Gosh im going to rage quit at some someone. Im not sure why but we had code that removed the models texture information from the scenetoc file, therefore when submitting it to the royal, royal couldn't see the texture paths.

I have muted the functions, which allow the models texture information to be writen to the scenetoc, and when I have copy locally it now works.

Is there a way to convert the path without copying it locally, or could I just correct the scenetoc information into a linux path and pass that to royal?

>Is there a way to convert the path without copying it locally
If you are on RR 6.0, then no.
RR 7.0 might be possible, but then it dublicates the scene on your fileserver once at submission.

But you have not used the the .scntoc and RR conversion before.
You have used the linktab file...
And the linktab not working is therefore an Arnold bug._________________Holger SchÃ¶nberger
Binary Alchemy - digital materialization

I have managed to sort it out it seems. there are two solutions I came up with.

1. submit to RR and have the copy file local, this works on the linux and windows machine
2. in scenetoc file, if I convert the paths to the images into linux paths upon saving the scene, it then renders on the farm.

As you mentioned this may be an Arnold bug, for now I have found a work around for it.